BERLIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14525, 12 November 1910, Page 1 (Supplement)

BERLIN.

Berlin expresses power, wealth, beauty. Over everything is written one —Prosperity. Have I been in the Picadilly, the Strand, the Kensington of Berlin ? Yes. And I have been in the working-class districts of Berlin. I have been there most —in the private dwellings, the public eat-ing-places, the dancing-halls, the gardens, the acres of seats and tables, where the working man' and his family drink a beer that scarcely ever makes him drunk. But I will tell you where I Have not been. I have not been. in the Poplar of Berlin, or the Hoxton of Berlin, or the Angel Meadow of Berlin, or the Seven Dials of Berlin. I poked about alone, and could not find them. I got hold of a tame Socialist, a keen student of men and. affairs, and with him for a guide we could not find them. To see the children in the working-class quarters of Berlin makes my . heart acheover the pale, thin-armed, spiritless children I have seen in the slums of London. No wander we English needed . a Fresh-Air Fund! In all my wanderings in tltiis big busy capital of Germany I have not seen a ragged man, a bent, unkempt woman, or a pate child. Poking into comfortable tenements, into halls full of dancing workers, into beergardens full of resting workers listening to the music-in a scene, of wholesome air and lightness and healthy gaiety, there has risen before me the nightly pictures I see when I emerge from the House of Commons in the capital of my native land.. .The keynote of Berlin is strength. There is abounding trade, there are hundreds of miles of country dotted with busy factories, and the life-blood of . organised manufacturing commerce fills the veins to the ends of the system. Everywhere strong, pulsing health.-— in Daily Express.